Hello Katie and Loretta,
Thanks for working on this! Sorry I haven't commented in more detail sooner.
Here are my comments on the PDF Techniques for WCAG found at
http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/2000/12/pdf.html
1. I think we should include version numbers in the title: PDF Techniques
for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and 2.0
2. In the abstract it says, "Because PDF is a Page Description Language,
not intended to be edited directly, these techniques are intended
particularly for the developers of authoring tools that generate PDF as an
output format." Since that is the case, perhaps most of these should be
incorporated into the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Techniques
[1]. Particularly, in relation to techniques for Content Management Tools
which ATAG-TECHS defines as, "Tools that assist authors to create and
organize specific types of Web content without the author having control
over the markup or programming implementation."
However, I think that if you explain how authors can use the tools to get
these results, that will be very appropriate for WCAG. Does that exist
somewhere already that we can point into? For example, does Adobe have a
document that describes how to use Adobe tools to create accessible PDF
documents? If so, is it on the Web? If it is, then we can list WCAG
1.0/2.0 checkpoints and point into the appropriate places in the Adobe
materials.
For example, I found section 7 "Foreground and Background colors" really
helpful. Are there more tips like this?
Also, under Guideline 2, section 1.1 (Render characters and words in
reading order). Is there a way to say, "here is how to create characters
and words so that they are rendered in reading order"?
3. I don't understand how the sections are numbered - is that part of what
you wanted us to ignore?
4. Are the "Deprecated Technique Examples" under Guideline 2 section 1.1
bad examples? That wasn't clear.
5. Section 3.2 (Tag artifacts in the page contents) - I'm not sure how that
relates to checkpoint 5.1, 5.2, and 5.4 since it is mostly about pagination
and layout. Can you associate row and column headers with data cells in
PDF? or Linearize layout tables?
6. Section 6 (Document navigation) - needs work. It doesn't seem complete.
7. Section 1.5, I think the most appropriate WCAG 1.0 checkpoints are
13.2 (Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites.
[Priority 2]). For example, to specify the character set in HTML you would
use:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
also: 3.2 Create documents that validate to published formal grammars.
[Priority 2]
and perhaps also
4.3 Identify the primary natural language of a document. [Priority 3]
But, I'm not completely sure what 1.5 means. Is it saying, "use unicode
characters?" I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of unicode, so perhaps
someone else can make a better suggestion.
8. Section 8 - you ask if anyone has ideas for which checkpoints
apply. I'm not sure.
9. Some of these techniques seem dependent on the PDF Accessibility
plug-in. Therefore you should reference UAAG and perhaps submit some
techniques to them as well.
10. I'm anxious to see a mapping to WCAG 2.0 checkpoints because I wonder
if you've identified requirements that we don't cover in either WCAG 1.0 or
in WCAG 2.0 and that we ought to incorporate in 2.0.
Thanks again! I look forward to your responses. Be well,
--wendy
[1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/WD-ATAG10-TECHS-20010319/
--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
seattle, wa usa
tel: +1 206.706.5263
/--